The following contains two novel excerpts and two short stories completed during the years of 2011 to 2013. Rain in Paluma consists of a fictitious community based upon island life in Australia. Stroke deals with the relationship of father and son, both facing the consequences of Alzheimers disease. The Desert Keeper centers upon a young girl who stumbles across a mythological figure in the guise of a hobbled woman. The Reedlands touches on the randomness and oddity of anonymous sexual encounters, while bringing together elements of Egyptian funerary ceremony.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. James Kimbrell, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 8, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 50 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2007.

<p> <b>This thesis</b> explores &ldquo;the sixth extinction,&rdquo; as a contemporary poetic of loss. Animals and their voices are interpreted as &ldquo;a language of loss.&rdquo; It portrays decrease in biodiversity, contemporary environmental circumstances, and the mass dying out of species as the elegies of our time. It draws on ecological science as well as literary and contemporary art references. </p><p> Death is a taboo in Western societies even though loss and pain are a part of existing and are linked to beauty and happiness. This thesis is about the quality of mourning that enables us to bear witness beyond our own baselines. Homer may be distant, but the vitality of narrating mourning, positioning of human among nonhuman, seems a suitable literary reference to make a leap into our bleak future, while searching for and insisting on beauty. </p><p> We lack a language that pronounces the contemporary environmental depth and fault lines: disunity. Consequences of environmental fragmentation inflict unprecedented cultural fragmentation, and are perceived as irreconcilable. In addressing macro ecology, I pay homage to other ways of speaking; setting out to test H&eacute;l&egrave;ne Cixous&rsquo; motion for &ldquo;a language that heals more than it separates.&rdquo; </p><p> <b>The chapters</b> are comprised of bilingual prose poetry, echoing an interbreeding of language, exploring possibilities in our human behavior for practicing a radical being. They address chronological references we rely on to create or &ldquo;describe&rdquo; a sense of meaning to our doings, in a broader sense working with the issues of the Cartesian split, voices to which we ascribe many of our environmental faults and failures. </p><p> American indigenous storytelling is used as inspiration for nonlinear narratives. Walter Benjamin&rsquo;s &ldquo;mystic of language&rdquo; also inspired this work. Parts of Benjamin&rsquo;s writing on mimetic behavior are applied to various time-issues within the environmental crisis, embodying a perception of what mass extinction will entail, through representative animal figures, able to shape-shift and embody mourning. </p><p> <b>The handbook</b> mimics the concept of a special language of obituaries, aiming to pay homage to the thinking of Martin Heidegger&rsquo;s &ldquo;thingness&rdquo; as well as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin&rsquo;s discussions of the naming of things: the innate power of the relation between objects and their given names.</p>

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Short stories / 2031-01-01T00:00:00Z

<p> <i>The Leaving Symphony: Musicality and Voice in the Poetry of Trauma, Addiction, and Redemption</i> represents two years of my critical and creative writing while attending the California State University, Long Beach M.F.A. in Creative Writing program. Evident in the poems of this manuscript, my major themes include trauma, addiction, and personal redemption, all through the intimate lens of my family and myself. Crucial to my writing is the evolution of those struggles, seen in the organization of the poems in this thesis. The methodological essay at the beginning of this project details my process and influences, followed by a full-length collection of poetry. My poetry is highly musical thanks to the inspiration of both my musician father and several writers, such as Sylvia Plath and Dean Young; my work also possesses a distinctive voice that took me decades to find, especially as a poet. This thesis documents that growth and eventual catharsis in writing. </p><p>

<p> <i>POISON</i> is a collection of loosely interrelated short stories chronicling one family&rsquo;s struggles with drugs, alcohol, poverty, gang affiliation, death, disease, and depravity in Los Angeles, California. Most of the stories are set in the 1990s, and channel the trends of the decade, especially those specific to LA. The chronology of the collection is scattered, the dates and details inconsistent or conflicting. POISON aims to emphasize the imperfect nature of memory, the ways in which recollection at once dictates our lives as well as dismantles it. The collection is accompanied by a fictional family tree and a nonfictional photo album containing real photographs of the semi-fictionalized characters depicted throughout the stories. While the photos may display a sense of contentment, when coupled with the collection&rsquo;s content, the reader may begin to interrogate the ways in which memory severely skews reality.</p><p>

<p> <i>The Daily Special</i> is a collection of seven short stories written during my Master of Fine Arts for Creative Writing career at California State University, Long Beach. The stories are linked thematically through a relation of food to a character&rsquo;s psyche in order to exemplify characterizations or conflicts. The element of food is either mundane or centered; however, all the stories respond with the emotion of fear that later results in an act of acceptance. The fear stems from two outcomes, not fitting in or losing something of value. The characters have to face their fears and accept their current situations in order to move forward.</p><p>

Magister Artium - MA (English) / Visklippie and other Cape Town stories is a collection of short stories, inspired by my experiences having grown up in the 1960s and 1970s in Cape Town. This is a fictional work that, however, uses memory and oral history as the main sources for the stories told. I have conceived my project in the context of South African short stories from the mid-twentieth century, a very significant part of our literary history, since it encapsulates the volatile years of Apartheid. Unlike most of the writing of this period, my stories will try to highlight individual experiences, especially female subjectivity. My fictional engagement is also narrowed down by region since I will focus more on the short stories which emerge out of and represent Cape Town. This collection will aim to reflect the diverse voices of the people who have lived in divided communities in Cape Town. The stories will cover the period from the 1960s to contemporary times. They will be stories told from the perspective of children and women, but a few will be focalised through marginal male characters. The collection will be grounded in local community experience and centre on family relationships where there is triumph over political and personal adversity. The voices that emanate from these stories are seldom represented despite the great diversity in South African literature. These voices will sometimes emanate from the perspective of individuals condemned and ostracised by the same people dispossessed by Apartheid. The stories will aim for individual perspectives, complex interior explorations, ironies and paradoxes that will reveal fleeting connections and triumphs despite adversity.